On behalf of what might be called with grim our
floating population, we desire to ask our City Fathers, for the twentieth time,
what say that the streets of San Francisco are the very worst and the most
disgraceful on this continent. Ranking high up among the wealthy cities of
the land, and paying an almost unheard-of taxation, our citizens are yet
compelled to absolutely wade through mud and muck enough to almost stall an
empty wagon. The pitiful patchwork of wooden boards and such truck is
worse than an absurdity, and amounts to a deliberate insult to the property
holder and the taxpayer, who pays for such folly.

We write feelingly and indignantly on this theme at this time, as a volume just
laid on our desk, and which is a report of the street improvements recently made
in Washington, make still sharper the contrast between our own corporate
mud-hole and the decently paved, drained and graded cities of less means, but
more civilization. From this report of the Commissioners of the District
of Columbia we find that there has been laid down in the city of Washington
alone within the past five years over one hundred and twenty miles of patented
pavements of all kinds. Miles, mark you; not squares. In other
words, every inch of a large and generously proportioned city, containing the
widest streets and large avenues, is paved with the same thoroughness and care
with which our best houses are covered, and which are, therefore, quite as
handsome and healthful in their way as is the latter. We are also told
that while nearly all of the varieties of pavement used and tested in Washington
are good of their kind, there are some six or eight that are admirable, and that
of these one in particular has been found to be unexceptionable, and to
completely answer al the requirements of a perfect roadway. This pavement
is called the "Scharff Asphalt," and is laid by the unique process of an
inventor of that name. It is with this particular pavement, we are
informed, that all the old, worn-out or unsatisfactory pavements are being
replaced in that happy city, notably in the case of the capital's great
thoroughfare, Pennsylvania Avenue, on which it is being used to replace the wood
block pavement which has so generally failed in the East.

We say we speak with extra emphasis about this
matter, at this time, because we happen to know that for the past six weeks the
owners, or agents, or controllers of this very pavement referred to above have
been knocking at the door of the Supervisors' Chamber asking of them the
assignment of some comparatively trifling piece of work, at barely cost prices,
simply that they may show the people of San Francisco and these torpid powers
that be whether they can afford thereafter to be without such a pavement as they
will lay down.

Our people are always willing to give attentive ear
to, and to profusely pay for, any clap-trap that will exploit or advertise our
city to the outside world. Could anything be more solidly advantageous,
more conducive to our own health and comfort, and better capable of making our
metropolis genuinely attractive to the troops of sight-seers and strangers that
crowd our now filthy streets, than to stop this interminable pottering and fall
in line beside our clean and handsome rivals of the other coast. Gentlemen
of the Board of Supervisors, the public eye is fixed inquiringly upon you!
What do you mean to do about it?